All commands (14,187)

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Retrieve a random command from the commandlinefu.com API
Seeing that we get back plain text anyway we don't need lynx. Also the sed-part removes the credit line.

Resets your MAC to a random MAC address to make you harder to find.
Next time you are leaching off of someone else's wifi use this command before you start your bittorrent ...for legitimate files only of course. It creates a hexidecimal string using md5sum from the first few lines of /dev/urandom and splices it into the proper MAC address format. Then it changes your MAC and resets your wireless (wlan0:0).

Rename all .jpeg and .JPG files to .jpg

Add a DNS server on the fly
Since systemd-resolved was implemented, add a DNS server have become weirder and harder than before. With this command, you can add a DNS server on-the-fly tied to an specific interface

Creates a proxy based on tsocks.

display a one-liner of current nagios exit statuses. great with netcat/irccat

List all symbolic links in a directory matching a string
Finds all symbolic links in the specified directory which match the specified string pattern. I used this when upgrading from an Apple-supported version of Java 6 (1.6.0_65) to an Oracle-supported version (1.7.0_55) on Mac OS X 10.8.5 to find out which executables were pointing to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands (Apple version) vs. /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_55.jdk/Contents/Home/bin (Oracle version). However, it appears the current JDK installation script already takes care of modifying the links.

Does a traceroute. Lookup and display the network or AS names and AS numbers.
From the man page. lft ? display the route packets take to a network host/socket using one of several layer-4 protocols and methods; optionally show heuristic network information in transitu -A Enable lookup and display of of AS (autonomous system) numbers (e.g., [1]). This option queries one of several whois servers (see options 'C' and 'r') in order to ascertain the origin ASN of the IP address in question. By default, LFT uses the pWhoIs service whose ASN data tends to be more accurate and more timely than using the RADB as it is derived from the Internet's global routing table. -N Enable lookup and display of network or AS names (e.g., [GNTY-NETBLK-4]). This option queries Prefix WhoIs, RIPE NCC, or the RADB (as requested). In the case of Prefix WhoIs or RADB, the network name is displayed. In the case of RIPE NCC, the AS name is displayed.

Join a folder full of split files
If you use newsgroups then you'll have come across split files before. Joining together a whole batch of them can be a pain so this will do the whole folder in one.

Do quick arithmetic on numbers from STDIN with any formatting using a perl one liner.
Good for summing the numbers embedded in text - a food journal entry for example with calories listed per food where you want the total calories. Use this to monitor and keep a total on anything that ouputs numbers.


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: